[open] Bloodfeather || Vulgaris, Leliana, Any ||

[leliana]

it's just what happens when your heart goes ablaze

In the aftermath of her meeting with Heartfire, she remains vigilant.

She does not trust the quiet that settles over Beqanna or the way that it curls around like smoke. She does not trust it and she feels the tension seep into her bones—some unspoken fear of the future. It leaves her wandering the borders at night. Leaves her getting little sleep as she stands in her grove of plants and trees, closing her eyes and letting her magic seep outward, slipping through the soil of Tephra and finding its way to her borders. It is exhausting work to patrol this way, but it gives her something like peace.

Since acquiring her magic, she does not require as much sleep as she once had, but she still grows tired. She does her best to hide it, uses her gift to keep her body healthy, but she feels the strain of it—no more than when she divides her attention between guarding the borders and being with her children.

Which is where she is at when she feels the pegasus heavily land on the border.

She glances upward, frowning, and feeling something like fear flutter in her heart.

She has never known Wolfbane outside of the war and the way they had clashed during it, and she has never spoken to him ever since they watched his child tumble into the fire, watched Vulgaris fall.

So she is not surprised by the way that her chest constricts.

Still, she doesn’t hide. She opens a portal in a flurry of leaves and petals and steps through. Her wings are red and pressed to her side and her hazel eyes slide to the tense body of Jakub. She remembers the wounds he had suffered as a young boy from Wolfbane and she presses her muzzle to his shoulder as she passes, a comfort as she presses a feeling of peace into him. When she withdraws, she angles her slender head up to the stallion, considering him with her calm features—giving nothing to what lives underneath.

“Wolfbane,” her voice is measured, but not unkind. “What brings you to Tephra?”

— Leliana —